Beverage infusers, such as those intended for tea, have been in use for thousands of years. Infusing flavors into beer pre and post fermentation has also been common practice for many beer brewers. However, very little has been developed in terms of infusing flavors into beer after the beer has been put into kegs or bottles. Early pioneers of post-packaged beer infusing used a variety of methods to infuse flavors into the beer such as coffee presses, pool filters, and tea infusers. However, all of these methods had two significant issues. First, these methods had no practical way of keeping the beer cold during the infusion process. When beer rises above 38° F., dissolved carbon dioxide in the beer will exit and cause foaming. Secondly, those methods did not have ideal pressure control. When beer leaves the keg at a relatively high pressure and enters a space of relatively low-pressure, such as in a dispensing situation, dissolved carbon dioxide will exit the solution and cause foaming as a result of the pressure drop. Keeping the beer cold can mitigate this foaming, suggesting that temperature control is an important component of a functional beer infuser.
Recent inventions, such as the “Fusion Tower” (Kyle PCT/US13/65429) and Dogfish Head's “Randall,” have attempted to solve the temperature issue by rapidly cooling the beer after it has been infused. However, rapidly cooling the beer after it has been infused is not ideal because there is still carbonation loss during the actual infusion process. Other products, such as the Blichmann “Hop Rocket,” attempted to solve this issue by putting the entire infuser in a refrigerated space, but that approach deprived the consumer (beer drinker) of the ability to see the infusion process, which has tremendous market value. The Hop Rocket also presented issues with user friendliness because whenever it (or a similarly operating device) needed to be emptied, filled, or refreshed with new ingredients, the user had to leave the bar to tend to the infuser, which is often far away in the keg refrigerator room. Additionally, all three of these previously mentioned inventions required extensive retrofitting to properly integrate into an existing draft beer system. Retrofitting and extensive installation requirements present a large obstacle that is inhibiting large-scale market adoption of any beer infuser.
Thus, there is a need for a simpler infusion device that can overcome these problems.